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Bowers & Wilkins support emerging artists at Remastered

Society of Sound is excited to announce ‘Remastered‘, an exhibition featuring emerging artists who have created interactive, mesmerising sound and moving image installations, with Bowers and Wilkins loudspeakers at their heart.

The exhibition will launch Thursday March 10 at One Marylebone in London, where thirteen artists and designers reinterpret some of history’s most prominent masterpieces, with technology as the driving force.

Tracing a timeline commencing from the beginnings of Western civilisation through to the cubist movement of the 1930s, these commissioned exhibition pieces reflect art’s historical past while seizing the possibilities of the future, now.

Electricity darting through paint strokes, landscapes that come alive through 3D animation, vibrating sound installations that bounce from the walls and multi-medium sculptural pieces; this unique cross-discipline exhibition examines how technology is enabling artists and designers to push the boundaries of their discipline with captivating results.

We spoke to five of the exhibiting artists about the role of sound in their pieces, and how they approached the sound design.

Dublin based artist Robert Corish draws from his engineering background to redefine Kandinsky’s On White II (1923), through an innovative interpretation of contemporary music.

“I investigate sound, its attributes and its applications. Attributes such as: physical propagation, motion and the flow of time; sonic frequency, oscillations, repetitions and transitions; fluid dynamics and dynamic fluid, both in general sound and aesthetic adaptations.”

Kandinsky’s theory that painting and composing music share a similar process is manifested in Corish’s piece, which utilises sound and its ensuing vibrations to create a mesmerising performance of projected images.

“I use the physical properties, such as vibration, and then experiment with an aesthetic and a scientific approach. The work is the process of experimentation.”

Plunged into a resonating arena of sound and light, Sara Hibbert’s figure addresses the dancer’s emotional struggle with the demanding discipline. “I use sound within my video work to assist in the creation of atmosphere and suggested narrative. In this piece it supports the visual material without altering its meaning, yet remains integral to the overall work.”

Hibbert, like Edvard Degas who’s piece the work references, fragments and records the variations of a dancer’s actions, placing them in a sequenced yet distressed visual continuum.

“When creating sound for video I always work simultaneously, allowing both elements to influence and support one another. It then comes together during the editing process, where I record, source and manipulate existing sounds.”

Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog inspired Rafael Pavon’s stereoscopic animation. “It starts with the concept of portraying different layers of London as one piece of constant motion that reveals new elements at a constant frequency. When I had to approach the sound design for this piece, I did it following the same process: capturing layers of sounds of the city; ambient, background sound and voices to create a multilayered soundscape, a collage both visually and acoustically.”

Video and sound artist Lung re-instills the shock originally intended to engulf the viewer when Edvard Munch created his Expressionist masterpiece The Scream. Screens and speakers omit a concoction of sights and sounds from a vivid sculpted wall, akin to the colours and theme tunes of a decaying fun park.

“Sound design for all my work starts from processed sounds either played in to a computer or pre-made that are chopped and constructed to form themes, which I then use to soundtrack the creative process.” Lung explains his process, “When I’m working on sound pieces and pure music, the seed can come from traditional and non traditional instruments as a sound source, then be treated, or by using existing audio.”

Designer and director Eric Schockmel’s 3D animation uses atmospheric effects to reference Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway. “Throughout the creative process I imagine the sounds that I need in any given part of the animation. They are part of the logical development of on-screen actions and are added to the rendered footage during editing.”

The symbolic object in Schockmel’s film whirs and clicks its way through a barren almost alien landscape, with eerie soundtrack magnifying the mood of this hyper-real environment.

“Sound design is an integral part of my storytelling practice. It adds an additional narrative layer to each piece and enhances the visual content. Off-screen actions, and the physicality of materials can be suggested through the sounds they make. The audience doesn’t need to be aware of the sound design as a process. In fact, it is something that works best in the background and coherently fuses with the visual parts of a piece.”

The sound at Remastered is supplied by a variety of Bowers & Wilkins products, including 683, Panorama, MM-1s and the P5 mobile hi-fi headphones.

Remastered is open to the public Thursday 10th March through to Sunday 13th March from 12-9pm, 12-8pm Saturday, 12-3pm Sunday.

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